


The Darkness within

by StolenMidnightKisses



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abused Harry Potter, Dark Harry Potter, Gen, Insane Harry Potter, No Dumbledore Bashing, No Weasley Bashing, Rated For Violence, Serial Killer Harry Potter, general bashing of muggles, general bashing of wizards, killer harry potter, mad harry potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 06:24:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19042951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StolenMidnightKisses/pseuds/StolenMidnightKisses
Summary: Harry sleeps in a cupboard that's too small to be comfortable but big enough that shadows gather in the corners and whisper things to him; and in a world where Harry only knows hunger and pain and loneliness, why shouldn't he listen to the voices?





	The Darkness within

**Author's Note:**

> This lil thing was drawn out of me after reading a very disturbingly uncanny Supernatural fanfiction- go figure :)  
> There's a bit in this fic where the kids in Harry's school bully a fat kid, a Muslim Pakistani kid, and a kid with gay parents- this in no way, shape or form reflects my own views, I'm simply doing this because, in the early 1990s, society wasn't as open to 'different' people, and kids especially can be very mean.  
> That being said, enjoy!

Harry was 6 and he was scared. His cupboard wasn't large enough for him to be able to fit in comfortably but it was big enough for shadows to hide in the corners where something waited every night.  
  
There were voices in the darkness who taunted him and called him a freak. There were faces in the darkness who smiled at him and made him trust them to only lash out when he slept and he would find them gnawing on his nails, licking his fingers and Harry couldn't scream, wouldn't scream because if he did his aunt wouldn't give him food and his uncle would beat him and Harry was hungry. So so hungry.  
  
And so Harry stayed night after night and listened to the voices who soothed and taunted him, to the faces who smiled, and found that those voices stayed in his mind when he exited the cupboard.   
  
He was frightened. He was scared, so, so scared. But he was hungry. And he was much more scared of the endless hunger and what might happen if he didn't fill that hole so when the voices told him to break the neck of the squirrel, he did. And then Harry learnt to listen to those voices because Harry learnt the taste of raw meat and learnt what it was like not to be hungry for the first time.  
  
***  
  
Harry was 8 and he'd long since learnt how to survive and how to not be hungry. But he was still scared and terrified. It felt like a constant, a cloak that he wore with him wherever he went but he could mask it well. The only time he didn't have to was when he was in his too big too small cupboard and the voices came out to play and they whispered things to him.  
  
And in the darkness of the night he learnt that an old woman had died two streets down alone in bed, murdered by her own son and he learnt that the kid who visited his class last week to see if he would move school didn't get into his mums' car but into a strange van. He felt the child screams and the voices intensified, bitting his hands, tucking his hair until it reached a cacophony and Harry bit down sharply on his hands, screaming and tasting blood, blood, blood and then... the kid released a last breath, something within him fundamentally breaking, and the voices settled to a mumble, finally quieting.  
  
The voices whispered every night of babies dead before their first breath, and men stabbed and people dying in agony and Harry didn't care, couldn't care, because he was *stronger* than all of those other people. Because where they cried and screamed, Harry learnt to laugh and laugh until his voice was hoarse and his nails broke from the strain of curling them in his hair. Where he learnt to face the darkness, find it staring back at him and embrace it in return the others cowered and fled from it. They were so pathetically weak.   
  
And sometimes in the darkness Harry found himself angry at humanity for making him have to accept the darkness because it was their fault he grew up this broken- but then his voices would whisper about another death and Harry found that he felt oddly vindicated and content.  
  
And after awhile, Harry listened eagerly for the deaths, sighing as they soothed the growing hole in him that was somehow different than hunger.  
  
***  
  
Harry was 9 when he learnt fundamental things about society. Sure, everyone hated Harry but everyone hated Mohammed more because he was Pakistani and a Muslim. Sure, everyone hated Harry, but Jeff had two mums and no one knew who the dad was. And while everyone hated Harry, they hated Delyala more because she was fat.  
  
And so Harry learnt the importance of a front. He learnt to dress well, and stay clean, and comb his hair and smile charmingly at people because how could someone hate such an angel? How could they say no to his big eyes and timid smile?   
  
He also learnt that adults viewed Piers as a darling boy even when he held Harry down so Dudley could punch him. Even when he broke Harry's arm, no one believed Harry because how could it have been _Piers_?  
  
He learnt that Vernon was a 'good man' who worked hard and graciously provided for a child who wasn't his, even though he wasn't obliged to. And when Harry came to school with bruises around his arms from fingers far too big to be his own, when he was only skin and bones and wore the rags of his cousin, everyone looked away.  
  
And the caretaker of the school was also a good man who took care of the school even when the school didn't have the funds to pay him. And yet whenever some kid was beaten up, he always looked away.  
  
And Harry decided that he didn't want to be a good man.  
  
***  
Harry was 10 when he learnt how people screamed in the darkness of their homes, how terrified they were of the darkness that Harry wore as a second skin.   
  
And Harry was no longer scared or terrified as his voices soothed him, as he felt the thick red blood run over his hands as he laughed and laughed and felt frighteningly alive as he was being an 'upstanding citizen' and giving back everything society ever gave to him.  
  
He felt the skin under his fingers as he peeled it back. The bones underneath. The quivering of muscles and the gasping breaths of a man who knows he's dying. And at the end of the night, Harry would be back in his cupboard under the stairs, the body and all evidence gone with his 'freakish powers'.  
  
***  
Harry was 11 when he learnt that he wasn't alone and he was a wizard, but Harry had been alone far, far longer than any of these people seemed to realise, and as he watched the people around him laugh and smile and he smiled shyly back at them behind Hagrid, playing every bit of the angel boy he could, he felt that familiar darkness calling out to him.  
  
He learnt that his scar was a ticket into every person's heart and that they all expected him to be a great, light and just wizard, even when they had left him to rot for the last decade and his darling, darling hunger rolled out in waves constrained by a wide, childish face that convinced everyone that he could do no wrong.  
  
By Christmas, Harry learnt that wizards screamed and bled just as well.


End file.
